The purpose of this essay is to explore how it can work to teach thematically with fiction as a source of expertise. We do this by analyzing the work of the literary book Not just tennis by Peter Barlach (2007) in a theme work called Life and death in an elementary school.
The essay is based on a research project on literacy and language development in thematic teaching, which is led by researcher Jan Nilsson at Malmoe University. The project has been conducted in a grade four in a school in southern Sweden, spring term 2009. The project has been based on qualitative methods. The essay is an independent analysis of parts of the project. We have also collected a small number of student texts for our analysis.
Results section describes the teaching situations related to the reading of literature in a thematic work. Furthermore, we describe the possibilities and limits of teaching situations, which emerged in our analysis. In our analysis we find that the work of the teacher helps the students to develop knowledge, on several levels. We interpret that the dialogue, to some extent, is limited. We also interpret that some teaching situations are not fully exploited. Our conclusions say that teaching based on experience, subjectintergration and litteraturereading, not by itself means that pupils develop knowledge. The conclusion highlights the importance of the teacher’s ongoing reflections of his or her own practice.